I feel like I should be writing about how I’m coming home to the USA in less than two weeks and what list I have to help me re-enter into America. But I don’t have that.
At the beginning of all of this I thought I’d leave the race fixed of all my past pains all healed and ready to take on the world because I was fixed!
*Insert laughter here*
So, what I have for you is a blog about how I’m still broken.
Right before we left Cambodia, half of our team left one night early to go stay in the city of Phnom Penh while 4 of us stayed at our host’s home, and the next day we would meet up at the bus station to leave for Vietnam.
For our last night, the family wanted to sing karaoke in their home, so that’s what happened. But while this wonderful family and my three teammates sang their hearts out inside I found myself sitting outside with my bible and journal, finally alone, finally able to sit down with the Lord and able to say, “What the heck is going on?”
Last month I felt numb. It wasn’t overjoyed about anything we did or anyone we met, but I didn’t hate anything we did or anyone we met. I was just there.
I just figured I was tired. Then comes the end of the month, the last night, I knew I needed to sit down with God, I needed time to just sit with Him.
I needed time in prayer, solid prayer.
Do you ever have time where you desperately need to pray; yet you just don’t even know what to say?
That’s where I was at.
So I turned to scripture to help me pray. Psalms.
Let me fill you in a little on some things I’ve been struggling with these past couple months.
I feel like I have been in a constant state of frustration, whether it’s with one constant thing or whether it’s with something different every day, or every hour.
I feel like I have been constantly overcome by this feeling of frustration. That being followed by my reminder for myself that I need to have more grace for others, more grace, more grace. Slowly followed by a lack of grace for myself.
I sat outside out this home in Cambodia reading in Psalms, going back and forth between verses helped me pray and cry out to God. Scriptures that I could be on my knees in prayer with, just what I wanted. Then it started going from psalms of feeling helpless and needing the Lord and helping me with prayer, to talking about those who walk blamelessly, and speak truth in their hearts and don’t slander and all of these things that in my frustration I felt like I was failing miserably at.
I sat there and I wept. I continued reading, I continued praying, and I continued to weep.
My frustrations and my lack of ability to extent grace to myself wasn’t left in Cambodia. It was something that I carried into Vietnam. It is something that I am still carrying and walking with now.
Which is where my expectations of the world race get blown to pieces. I won’t be coming home shiny, full of grace, a perfect Cassidy, because right now I’m a Cassidy who is struggling with every fiber of her being to extend grace to herself.
I was reading my bible last week, and the perfect verse was presented to me.
and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Romans 3:24
I read that and I thought how perfect, this is what the Lord is wanting to tell me right now.
But I am currently stuck inside my own head. Because I know the truth. I know grace. I know the power of grace. I know the love behind grace. And how it is freely given and we have nothing to work for. And when it comes to others, I want to give it away, and I want to strive for that. To love because he loved us, and to extend grace because he extended grace to us.
But I know how far I have to go, especially lately with this frustration that has been lingering. I’ve gotten multiple sets of feedback encouraging me to just give a little bit more grace, just a bit more.
And the more I think about it, the more I think without them knowing that, that grace is intended for me to give to myself.
I was talking to one of my favorite people Rosie about this, cause we aren’t meant to handle things like this alone (so find someone) and she asked questions, she encouraged me to find the root of this.
I have no idea what the root is or if it will be resolved by the time I come home. It’s one thing to sit in complete unawareness to the things that God is trying to do, I believe it’s another to own up to it, and be real and open about it. I am struggling with giving myself grace, why do others deserve it but I don’t? I don’t think they do and I don’t, I just can’t seem to always extend it to myself.
There is no conclusion to this blog. There is no part where I figure it out. This is just where I’m at.
I’m not coming home perfect.
I’m still broken. Imperfect. Growing. Figuring things out. A little rough around the edges.
This isn’t the end all be all. It’s a stepping stone. It has showed me and lot, and I will take these things and bring them into these next seasons of life, trying to figure out the rest of this life.
